Motor vehicles in transit will necessarily encounter a variety of environmental conditions which may result in inconvenience or hazard for the occupants of the vehicle. Some of these environmental conditions may be permanent and in a fixed location, for example, a landfill emitting noxious odors, or a continuously-running plant emitting pollutants; some may be transitory and in fixed locations, such as an odor-emitting plant operating during restricted hours, or dust or pollen occasioned by plowing of fields or harvesting of crops; and some may be transitory and occur in varying locations such as vehicle emissions associated with traffic jams.
Many of these conditions and others such as:    high levels of dust or other building material debris around construction sites;    natural climatic situations like sand storms, acid rain, hail storm, volcanic dust, etc.;    odors etc. near swamps;    high noise, for example in blast areas;    insect swarms for example, mosquitoes, bees, grasshoppers, fish flies etc.
may be either inconvenient for the occupants of the automobile or may in combination with medical conditions such as asthma, emphysema or insect bite allergies pose hazards for vehicle occupants.
Thus it is desirable to identify and preferably anticipate such conditions; assess what, if any, level of concern they raise; and take appropriate remedial action. One remedial action, suitable for situations where a vehicle has already entered an environmentally-challenging zone could include adjustments to on-vehicle settings to modify the internal vehicle environment. For example, closing windows, setting the air conditioner to re-circulate internal air rather than drawing in external air etc. Another remedial action, one which is most effective when knowledge of environmentally-challenging zones is available prior to the vehicle's entering the zone, would include changes to the vehicle route, preferably under minimal trip time penalty.
One approach to identifying such zones could involve equipping a vehicle with sensors capable of detecting at least a sub-set of these environmentally-challenging conditions and sufficient computing ‘intelligence’ to interpret the sensor signals. The computing device would respond appropriately to any threat or perceived threat, either by alerting vehicle occupants or by making automatic adjustments to vehicle controls. However, consideration of the listing of conditions above indicates that such an approach would mandate a very large number of sensors, significant computing power and sophisticated algorithms capable of synthesizing simultaneous inputs from multiple sensors. The problem becomes at least more cumbersome and probably more complex if any level of redundancy is desired and if multiple chemical sensors are selected to enable response-specificity to particular chemical species.
Further in-vehicle sensors can provide no data capable of anticipating environmentally-challenging conditions. Sensors will respond only to conditions which are already present and thus a sensor-based approach will abbreviate the range of allowable responses. For example, selection of an alternate route to avoid a particular condition is made much more difficult and correspondingly less flexible if the selection is only made when a sensor has detected that a vehicle has already entered an environmentally-challenging area.
Thus there is a need for a means of identifying the nature and location of environmentally-challenging zones with sufficient anticipation to afford maximum flexibility in response.